A startup always needs the capital. Entrepreneurs have numerous ways to fundraise. They can choose to boot-strapping, borrow loans from the bank, and find angel investors or venture capitalists. All of the above are traditional funding ways. In recent years, with the development of the Internet, Crowdfunding, an innovative way to raise money, is increasingly popular among small business founders.

Neurio, an enterprise regarding home intelligence, successfully raised enough capital in KICKSTARTER, one of the largest crowdfunding platform in the end of 2013 and shipped its products to the backers in the beginning of 2015.

The benefits that Neurio gained from crowdfunding went far beyond funding. Crowdfunding helps the company with improving the project and promises sales in the meantime. The online crowdfunding platform allows the company to collect primary information from its customers straightforwardly. During the process of funding, Neurio found that their customers from the Europe wanted the company to have EU certification. Then it immediately responded to the need of its European customers. Neurio gives the backers its products in return, which is a kind of pre-sale in essence. It allows the company to precisely forecast how much products made by the company would be bought so that it is able to avoid overproduction.

Do you have difficulty in seeking capital? Don’t hesitate to launch your project in the crowdfunding platform!

Article from:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/energyaware/neurio-home-intelligence/posts/631193

Image from:

https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/projects/677439/photo-original.pngv=1397834032&w=1536&h=1152&fit=crop&auto=format&q=92&s=e8781e757831fbe977d39ffec2111cdc

To succeed in today’s highly competitive market, a company must figure out various needs of its target customers and provide them with personalized products or services. This goal is especially difficult to accomplish in clothing industry, in which most products are produced in high volume. Meanwhile, most people want their clothes to be unique and reflect their personality. UNIQLO, a Japanese clothing retail giant, has already found a way to solve this seemingly paradox.

Recently, UNIQLO opened its first ‘Magic For All’ store in ShangHai. This store mainly features Disney theme, which is attractive to those with childlike innocence. Moreover, the biggest highlight of the store is UT factory where customers can design their own T-shirts’ patterns and add different accessories to items of clothing.

From my perspective, UT factory is overturning traditional operation pattern of clothing industry.It promotes inventory and variability during clothes-making process by allowing cutomers to be co-creators of the products. While designing their unique clothes, customers also gain a sense of achievement and happiness. By launching its first ‘Magic For All’ store, UNIQLO is making a great progress in customization, which proves to be a useful method of promoting sales.

Article from:

https://www.newsmaker.com.au/news/37129/uniqlo-opens-worlds-first-magic-for-all-store-in-shanghai#.VhHGTPlViko

Image from:

http://www.acnnewswire.com/topimg/Low_159254.jpg

Commerial drones seems to be an emerging market with promising future.DJI,a chinese commerial drone-producing company,is leading the trend.

Commerial drones market is not a market leading by the price factor. Customers are willing to pay premium price for a drone with better performance.How does DJI apply differentiation strategy? DJI keeps focusing on the product uniqueness from the launch stage of the company. Collecting information from customer’s feedbacks regularly, DJI releases new products every year.

Why does DJI manage to have low days of inventory which serves as a competitive advantage? DJI ‘s governance structure creates a loose internal innovation environment for junior employees. Once they have new ideas, they can report to the vice presidents directly and get funds to improve products.Moreover, the company have a high tolerance of failure, which is rare in large companies.

However, DJI is faced with fierce competition because of its differentiation strategy. Commerial drones market is a big cake and everyone want to have a taste of it. From my perspective, DJI should make most use of its current technology advance and large market share to defeat its competitors at home and abroad.

Article from:<http://www.economist.com/news/business/21647981-chinese-firm-has-taken-lead-promising-market-up>

<http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/generic.shtml>

<https://hbr.org/2013/06/transient-advantage>

Image from：

<http://blogs-images.forbes.com/frankbi/files/2015/04/Phantom-3-3-e1428477888137-1940×1089.jpg>

Toshiba, a Janpanese international company which mainly sells electronic products, lost its CEO in July, 2015 because of inflating its profit over the past several years.

Here I want to apply EVERETT E. COLBY ‘s theory about factors of financial statement fraud to analyze the reasons why Toshiba would do such things. Toshiba Corp wanted to maintain its leading position in Japan’s electric industry and live up to its investor’s expectation. Once the company started to exaggerate their profits and hit a sweet spot, it is likely that they will get addicted to it. Additionally, customer’s trust in the company create a smoke screen for the company that it can get away with cheating the public.

From my prospective, publc corporations have intrinsic responsibility of providing the public with real financial statements. However, accounting scandal seems to be a common phenomenon in recent years.The consequences brought by fraudulent financial statements are unfavorable. These companies go against business ethics and would lose market’s trust eventually. Moreover, the whole economy of the country would be affected to some extent. Since the market failed to deal with accounting scandals, the government should intervene through making strict regulation and using the power of external investigation.

Article from:

<http://www.wsj.com/articles/toshiba-ceo-felled-by-accounting-scandal-1437468537>

<https://www.cga-pdnet.org/Non_VerifiableProducts/ArticlePublication/FinStatFraud/FinStatFraud_p1.pdf>

Image from:

<http://cdn03.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/toshiba.jpg>